The conference was organized by the UW Foster School of Business, and was in the shadow of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama this week.

A core message was that China’s one-party system is rooted in China’s thousands of years of a “merit-based bureaucracy” tradition and supplies more civic stability that most Americans understand, said Bob Kapp, former head of the Washington State China Relations Council.

The very word "party" has vastly different meanings in the United States and China, he said.

Despite civic unrest that generates up to 300 protests a day, the state and Communist Party are still considered the center of “moral authority” by most of the Chinese populace, he said. Western-style party politics is not likely to arrive anytime soon.

Meanwhile, China’s economy will continue to grow rapidly, supported by $2.85 trillion in government cash reserves, and a public debt of only 16 percent of GDP, compared to the United State’s 60 percent debt, said Joe Massey, a partner in Sierra Asia, an investment consulting firm.

Despite these stable areas, the problems China will face include:

- An aging population, which means that the supply of workers will peak in 2015 and then start to decline, burdening the future economy with the cost of caring for elders.

- A growing environmental problem, from air quality to falling water tables, that, so far, is ahead of government efforts to reverse it.

- Large dichotomies in wealth distribution that likely will continue, despite millions of people migrating to the cities from rural areas.

- Growing tensions between China and many of the 34 nations around its borders, as China becomes more assertive about territorial claims and its military power.